Eraritjaritjaka

He who has too many words can only be alone.
---Elias Canetti

You can have my head, or my heart, but I can not pronounce this word for you--Eraritjaritjaka. Who says Chinese is difficult?

In my Playbill, Notes on the program, it says in the first sentence: Erarijjaritjaka refers to an Australian Aboriginal phrase that means "driven by the desire for something that is lost." or "possessed by longing for something lost". I am the manefestation of Erarijjaritjaka.

And I am writing this only about an hour since I left Rose theater at the Time Warner tower, after sitting through the hour and half what should you call it, a one-man show, a perfomance, a multi-media project or a recital, a musical, or really, a miracle of art and life, an unforgetable experience, a journey, something to die happily after yet you feel lucky you have been alive to see this and know this.

I want to kiss the dirt on the floor of that theater, I want to give myself to the creator or the actor, I want to hug everyone in the audience who have exprienced this with me, I want to learn to speak German, so that I could read Elias Canetti, I want to listen to the French voices that is reciting his words forever, I am in love with each and every member of the Mondriaan Quartet.

Yes, this Eraritjaritjaka, it is THAT good. I am so excited that I could not do anything else rather than writing this down now, as the needs of prolonging that experience overwhelms everything else, like I am on drug or having the organism of the life, like my obessesion of my love of you.

Its French name is "Musee des phrases", or 'museum of phrases' built by Heiner Goebbel with texts taken from Elias Canetti's autobiographical writings (You can go straight down to his text at the end of this post, mine in comparison, is saying nothing, although I have to say them.)

I wanted to see it the moment I saw the poster in Lincoln center about 2 months ago. I thought it seemed to be inovative and interesting. And I know Lincoln center summer program usually have the best art of the world. I was thinking if I move by end of this month, I might not have time to see it. Then I forgot about it all together. I was scattered.

I decided not to move, yet. I was taking a day off Friday after 2 weeks' long and busy work. I was breathing a bit normal. I passed by the poster last night, I noticed that Saturday, today is the last show. And they only have 3 nights. I was like, ok, tomorrow I will buy the ticket to see it.

So I did, not knowing what is in store for me.

I was admiring the brand new Rose theater, I have never watched one performance in the new Jazz center in the Time Warner building. It is so near to where I am that I feel I can always do that if I want. But I never did until now. I am so glad that my first exprience was through this particular EXPERIENCE--I have no right word for it.

A French speaking actor, acting Elias Canetti, speak his words, who wrote in Germany, with the music played by the Mondriaan Quartet and two remote controled robots, a miniature house. Musicians moved around on stage. The actor walked around, talked in French, subtitles in English appeared on top of the Stage. I was a little annoyed at first since I had to read the subtitle, and then missed his perfomance. Then the words are too good and I settled on the subtitle. The miniature house is then changed into a stage background, a side of a white house with 4 windows, 2 stories.

Then 2o mintues into the show, the actor actually Walked off the stage, then out of the theater, followed by a guy with DV and we began to watch a live video. Audience were so surprised that we were silent and then began to laugh out of disbelief.

He walked out of the Time Warner building, got into a limo, the limo drove along 59 street westward, I knew it since it is my hood, then it turned left on 9th avenue. The actor was talking all these time, continuing his recital. I kinda of hoped they would pass my building but the limo turned right on 57th, then right again on to 10th Avenue. It stopped on the corner of 65 and Armsterdam. The actor got into a grocery store, got a bottle of water, then walked toward 64 street. He turned left on 64th and got into an apartment building.

Camera followed him through the door, stairs and to a large apartment. There he picked up newspaper, opened a letter, wrote a note, stired an egg, peeled an onion, cooked some dinner, lived a life. The Mondriaan Quartet is playing on our stage at Rose theater in front of our eyes when he peeled onion and his action is perfectly in sync with the music.

Then some haunting experiencde happened when he walked upstairs, doing his laundry. I was thinking from some angle it did not look like it was from a hand-holding DV, but I did not give it too much thought.

Then he walked downstairs and the Mondriaan Quartet was playing in his living room, when did they go there? The stage, without us knowing it, is now empty and dark.

All this time we were watching on the screen the hand-held video--we feel like watching a film. Word is powerful, his performance is powerful. I am immensed into it.

Then the video had some special effects, we were looking at the actor and the quartet through four windows of his apartment. I thought hey, that is video editing.

But in a wink of eyes, we realized we were staring through the 4 windows on the stage. They are back on stage, yet we thought we were watching an apartment on 64th between Broadway and Amsterdam.

That idea is striking, I have to say, so smart and seamless, you feel like being cast a spell. It is the theater play at its best.

But all these time, all these back and forth, music that varies in tone and pace, his speaking in French, the words, in French and in the English subtitles are mesmerzing, painfully true, so powerful that they burn my eyes, yet I can not stop looking and reading.

Elias Canetti is a Jew, from what I read, he is also an expert on Crowd Psychology. His words describes the horror of a world of order, of deprived individuality, of the like world of 1984. With my background, I felt the chill on my back when I know I probably lived that without knowing it when I was a kid. Yet, it is also a universal terror if you think of what is happening in this country and in the world as we speak.

I stopped breathing so many times in the show that I think that put me in a stage of dreamy due to lack of Oyxgen. Or I am just experiencing something extraordinary.

Soon the light was on, I stood up as so many others giving the performer and creator a standing ovation. My gratefulness is beyond description.

While I was doing the Bravo and clapping and totally over spilling with my awe, the woman sitting beside me who fudged all through the show suddenly said to me: Excuse me.

I was like: now what? Can't you see I am busy? She said very innocently: What perfume are you wearing? It smells so good!

I was like what are you talking about, I can't believe she is asking about that. I feel offended as a serious art vierwer--actually I was pretty pleasantly surprised. But this is the perfume my sister gave me when I was in Asia, so I was like, I don't know. I got it in China. Then I went back to my clapping and bravoing. (Later I checked the bottle, it said Estee Lauder--not Chinese, named Pleasant, better than fortune cookie.)

All the time when I was taking the escalator down, walking out of the Time Warner building and back home, I feel humbled and grateful. I feel my heart is filled with love and peacefulness. I feel awfully lucky and fortunate.

I still do now, while writing down these words. I must have done something right. For the first time, I felt guilty for feeling that it is a pity that you are not there with me, I always do when I am enjoying something good, seeing a performance or walking around Paris.

But this is so overwhelming that I could not let much room of unsatisfaction in. I am grateful for what it gave me. I am grateful that I am there alone even, so I am not distracted in anyway. It is just Eraritjaritjaka and me, Canettie and me, the power of real innovation and love of truth and me.

I wish I can bring back this show so that more people could see it. Please, don't miss if it ever reach the place where you live or if you get a chance to see it. This is part three of a triology. I am wondering about the other two.

I am thinking if I can be a producer, I want to produce the show in China, so that the words can touch more heart, so that the magic can light up more life.

I grabed one of the last copies of the Engligh text book ouside Rose theater, after we exited. I hereby typed those shorter quotations from Canetti that I love the most, not necesarily in this order.

In Music, words swim--words that usually walk. I love the pace of words, their paths, tehir stops, their stations; I mistrust their flowing.

The sentence by itself is clean. The very next one takes something from it.

What an astonishing Hierarchy among animals! Man sees them according to how he stole their qualities.

Do animals have less fear because they live without words?

A society in which every man is painted and prays to his picture.

A society in which people weep only once in a lifetime. They do it very sparingly; once it is past, they have nothing to look forward to and have become old and tired.

A society in which no one dies alone. A thousand people get together of their own accord and are publicly exectued; their festival.

A society in which Children serve as executioners so that no adult smears his hand with blood.

A society in which people breathe only once a year.

You can't do anything nastier to a person than occupy yourself exclusively with him.
(was guilty as charged myself)

Can one turn calm through precision? Isn't precision the supreme reslessness?

The ludicious thing about order is that it depends on so little....everything that does not belong to where it is, is hostile....there is something murderous in order, nothing is meant to live where it is not allowed.

To speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you.

You are so beautiful, he says it at times but he is speaking to no one.

I do not hate what I have learned; I hate living it.

He who has too many words can only be alone.

There they whisper to one another and punish a loud word with exile.

There the people are most alive while dying.

There the house number are changed every day so that no one can find his way home.

There one has someone esle for pain, one's own pain doesn't count.

There countries have not capitals. The people all settle at the borders. The country itself remians empty. The whole border is the capital.

There someone who has been insulted closes his eyes forever, and opens them in secret when he is alone.

There people say "You are" and mean "I might be".

You can't keep living in a truly beautiful city: it drives out all your yearning. (What does Parisan do then? or New Yorkers? )

Looking Back: Beijing Melodies

He told me, much to my surprise: "I think you are very beautiful. I do", in a so-called English corner of a nearby university, in English, when we were 19.

English corner is the place where Chinese students who love to practice English can expect to meet with foreigners or other students to speak English.

It is, for many of us, a good place to meet guys or girls too--a more legitimate one than the dancing hall which smelled cabbage soup since at day time it was used as dining hall for students.

Plus you can use English speaking as a pre-screening criteria, while in dancing parties, you could run into scum who do not even belong to the university.

I knew him already. We were English partners in the same class of our college in the freshman year. That means we were expected to meet after class and walk around the playground practicing English like this:

"Where are you from"
"Jinan, a city 500 km from Beijing".
"How about you"
"How do you like living this city"
"Do you have brother and sisters"?

It is like we were dating, only in English. He is tall, strong, but a bit grim and quiet. His English was among the worst in the class of 20. So we practiced a lot.

We were English Partners for a year when we were freshman. Entering the second year, we stopped being partners but remain classmates. We didn't hang out. He went home all the time since he lived in Beijing, I was going dancing with students from other cities like myself when not studying in library.

One time, we run into each other in the English corner. He smiled at me while I was busy talking to other people with my then still pretty strong British-accented English.

He waited and then pulled me aside when he got a chance. He said:" Good to see you here" and we chatted.

Then he said what he said. It was so sudden and hidden in English, I could not take it seriously and do not know how to react. And I was way too innocent then to read its message.

I smiled and said: "Heh Heh, that is good to know. Thanks".

Truth is, I did not know I was beautiful. I still don't know today. I was and is that little girl who could be shy and unsure of herself on many occasions, when all other people see is confidence, style, and vivacity on the surface.

Then we just stared each other for a while, not knowing how to continue. His eyes were glistering under the sky, warm. I remembered looking up into his eyes and was thinking: What is this?

Then someone began to join us.

We never talked about this again. He was silent around me. Except in a dancing party organized by my class, he was there for a change. We danced for one song. Then I had to leave early. I was going to meet a guy I was seeing and I was crazy about him. He followed me outside while I was leaving and said: "Please stay for a little longer. Please" in a half joking way. I was again confused about this request. But my heart was not there. I didn't have time to interpret what he wanted, a bit surprised by his request.

I said: sorry. I need to go see this guy. I am late already."

Something painful and dark appeared in his eyes for a split second, then he smiled graciously: "Oh. I did not know. Sorry to keep you. Run."

I ran. I did not think it more. Soon after, he began dating a very cute girl, cuter than me in my opinion, from another class and we never talked about this anymore. We remained pretty close whenever we saw each other, we didn't see each other that much.

I was broke soon after I graduated from school since I worked for government agency and my then boy friend was not working, with too big a dream. Yet we still went out all the time.

Debt piled up and I had to borrow some money at one point to keep the cash flow. I turned to him. Somehow I feel I would not feel as humiliated to go to him since he knew me well. I know he was doing well as well. He worked very hard.

He lent me the money with out asking a question. Only when I returned the money to him, he said: I did not mean to judge anything, but why is he not taking care of you?

I said: "He is. I am happy". I felt a little hurt from his question.

I never admit that he might be liking me. I would rather believe it is purely friendship from the English partnership.

We kind of lost touch since I went to the US for school and stayed, except exchanging couple of letters at the beginning. I seldom think of him. My other classmate in DC one day told me over a drink: "He is married to a girl 2 classes behind us."

"Good for him. Have you met his wife?" "No."

"A girl with big eyes. I heard...You know, he always liked you."

"I did not know. " Maybe I did.

I went back to Beijing 2 or 3 times over the years, I always met him with many other classmates and we talked in the way that no real information was exchanged.

I know he had a son and he was very busy with work and he did very well.

In my most recent visit to Beijing, I called him up and we made a dinner appointment. On the phone, he said: How many people are going to dinner, one of your typical coming-home reunion?
"No. I had 4 nights in Beijing and one night is for business dinner, one for my friends from NYC, one for my family friends, and the last one is for old friend--that is just you and me. I did not even call the rest of the classmates. "

Truth is I have been tired for those crowded dinner gatherings with semi-strangers like distant relatives. I hate networking and if they are you friends, you don't net work, you talk to them.
And I feel like talking to an old friend one on one.

I always felt that I owed him this. He chuckled from my explaination.

But there is a catch, I was meeting the head of the Beijing office of my company for a late drink afterwards. I told him that. He offered taking me to dinner in the hotel restaurant where I was meeting her for drink so that we had more time to talk.

He picked me up from a coffee place when I was meeting another good friend from NYC who now works in Beijing. We went to have dinner at the Sichuan Restaurant at the downstairs of the Grand Hyatt Beijing. The restaruant is called Southern Beauty.

He gained some weight compared to school time but in fairly good shape. He still had that grim look. But he smiled when we sat across each other, I know that smile, like that night at English corner, like when we were both 19.

"How is life? Wife? Son? Happy?" My question came after the appetizer.

He did not answer at the beginning as if trying to decide what he wanted to say. Then it came like outpour.

He fell in love with this girl years after we graduated. He loved her maybe because he did not understand her. He said he tried his best to understand and 2 years later, he knew her, he knew she had no heart, she had a core that was and is cold. But they were too deep in a relationship and he was too tired. So he got married.

"I decided that I do not have time to spend on pursuing love anymore. I need to focus on making my career success, making money, making a good future. I don't have time for love. "

I was stunned. I was not ready for this.

"I never got a call from her when I was on business trip. She would not wait upon me when I come home from a trip with dinner or food. She is not a bad person, that is just who she is. She does not care for anyone in a warm way. She does not care how much money I make either. She is independently wealthy. I am glad she gave me a son."

"That is why I worked non stop, and I never took her to our reunion.".

"Why don't you divorce her? You deserve better than that." I mumbled, feeling a little wired in this position.

"I would not ask for it if she does not. Is she ask for it, I will say yes in a heartbeat. But I won't initiate it. I don't have time for love. It is too much work. I am doing really well financially and I have been to all over the world for business".

That is different from enjoying life. "I respect your thought of creating stability for your future and your family, but money is not everything."

I looked at him feeling sad and shocked, I felt wanting that little boy back who spoke bad English but with warm eyes. Yet he is tired and settled with life, although well off.

"How about you?" He threw the question back at me.

"I am still working like a dog in NYC."

"Why don't you come back?"

"I am still getting my Greencard, I like New York, and, I am in love with someone I met there, a guy from New England. " That answer covers the typical follow up question of :"Is he an American or Chinese?"And I miss you tremendously when I said that.

"I don't plan to come back for some time, so that is why I am here in Asia for 5 weeks. Take care personal business and business business". Sweet and bitterness filled my voice and my heart.

I am not ashamed of being that dreamy person, madly in love. But again I saw that something painful in his eyes for a split second. I have been telling him I am in love with someone else every time he checked.

"But you must have loved someone all these years? How can you live like that?" I would not give up, although I know people do live like that. I did for sometime.

He paused for some time.

"Yes, there is this woman I met at work. She cared for me. We were both married. So it is not going anywhere. She said she would take care of me when were both old, when we could be together."

"That is sweet." I patted his hand from excitement.

We smiled at each other. So love still have a chance, even a small and fragile one, even a one that does not manifest in a daily life. I felt warm toward him knowing that he did still have that side.

But behind that smile there was the heaviness of hard and cold reality of all the changes and compromises and untold stories, rejections and unsatisfied longings.

Among all the years from when we were 19, when we asked questions and answered them in English, those were simples ones with quick answers, facts, description of dreams, ideals.

We took our different journeys and at this table the questions and answers are not something we can probe, answer in a heart beat, or can easily come up with a straight version.

Is that what growing up has done to us?

He said when we got up to leave: "I did not mean to invite you for dinner just to tell you how unhappy I have been. It is not right. I just feel like talking to you about this. I have never told anyone else. I am happy that we had tonight".

"Me too. "

He walked me to the lobby of the hotel where I need to find my way to this bar called Red Moon, and he will pick me up to send me off in the airport the next day.

My fiery Thai woman who is the head of the Beijing office was already standing there looking around--I smiled that professional smile toward my English partner for the reminder of the night.

I was sitting in that sinful looking business lounge full of ambitious business men from the west, the best hotel bar in Beijing, the place to be as far as money making goes. That was why I was there too, talking to the office head of Beijing. My once home city has changed beyond belief as well. We all did. My thought of you made me feel warm. I knew I did not want to be there, no matter how much money is there to be made, I want to be with you then, in a building facing the Hudson.

Next day at noon, he picked me up and we were on the highway toward the airport, I felt something different in him. He felt uncomfortable.

"Can you do me a favor, please don't tell others about me. I am fine. I don't want them to know about my wife or my financial situation. I want to be that low key person as ever. I don't want gossip or spot light or revealing and I don't need it. " And he could trust me better than that.

I felt something I liked on him the previous night was suddenly gone or lost. I can not feel them anymore. He was that distant business man again, withdrawn and grim.

I patted him on his hand holding the wheel: "Don't worry. That is between you and me."

Something I did not say is that I feel sometime a little courage will help, it will help for you to repeat what you say, say it loud, say it with consequence, say it and do not worry that the whole world can hear it, say it so that you are at risk of being hurt, say what you are and be happy about it.

No wonder I did not hear you last time you told me something you wanted to tell me, you withdraw too fast for it to hold, to mold into anything meaningful.

But it is hard. I am not as truthful and straightforward as I want myself to be neither. We all had our weak and uncomfortable time. I am no better that whom I have just silently judged.

When we hugged goodbye in front of the departure hall, I said: "Be happy and money will never be enough, so take it easy".

"You too. Good to see you." For a brief moment, we looked at each other and I saw that boy again. I regretted my annoyance and judgment.

"Next time, we may have more time to talk and more good news to share! "

"About love or Money?" He loosed up finally, and he was teasing me for my contempt of money making the previous night, I was already on my way to the ticket counter. I waved good bye and said with my lips: Love. That meant to be the answer to his question.

He waved. It will be a better story if he said " You are still beautiful" with lip language. Of course, that only happen in a movie directed by a vain girl and suckers of romantic crap like me.

Fact is I feel warm toward him, but I don't feel romantically charged, I never did toward him. Something never changes. Still there is something sweet about it, maybe for the memories of walking around the playground at night, asking questions that we may really want to know the answer to.

Although, my heart, at that time, when I was walking toward my counter for checking in, was pounding for the fact that I am getting closer to come back to New York, to you.

Beijing was the past, New York is the now and ever. Where future is, I don't know.

A song about leaf

A beautiful Chinese song, Leaf (Click to play)

A leaf, is the tired wing, resting on the tree;
The wing, is a leaf that is falling.

Loneliness is one person's revelry;
revelry is the loneliness of the crowd.

I am walking, stopping, writting letters, listenting to my own voice;
Where my heart is drifting, I can not see.

But I know, it is not just that I have lost you.

* * *

I am so tired from work.

I remember, working is empowerment, Karl Marx so said, yet I am just tired as a leaf, resting on a tree.

And Karl Marx just thought and wrote, he never had to work.

Too Tired to Post Anything Other than Adding More Red

Too tired from work to post anything this night, although I have stories that I wish to write up.

Too busy and exhausted to take care of important things in my life, I want a month off, a trip to go away with you, Costa Rica, maybe, to see your smile and know you are well, to laugh, together with you.

Yet, now I can only post the photo of the red roof of a French Bistro in the city I visited over the weekend, to see friends who are moving away, far away. And the couple in the photo, while they balanced the picture nicely, are not my friends.

He Is Here, with the Folklore of Exile

When I walked out this morning to get my breakfast, I took two sections out of my Weekend New York Time, the book review and the travel; art and leisure is for later; real estate and automobile is for toss. It reflects my restless heart, mind and body of exploring the unknown places, in stories or in destinations.

When I was reading the book reivew and enjoying my bagel sitting beside the fountain of Columbus Circle, I read this article and I knew instantly, he is here, I have been waiting for him.
Roberto Bolano, and his Last Evenings on Earth, short story collections of Folklore of Exile. He is Chilean, like Pablo Neruda.

I am obessesed with South American writers and their Magical Realism/Surealism, if they need a label or two.

And Bolano is said to be the latest and great master of it, he died already at a young age of 52, in spain, on exile. I cut the article that talked about his work in a book review from New York Times this time last year, the I began to wait. At that time, I thought this is going to be a long wait.

But he is here. Time flies. Many have happened. You are not with me. He is going to be.

I was reading the article with excitment, then the following description makes me teary and smily at the same time:

In "Days of 1978", B finds himself at a party telling a disputatious Chilean exile the plot of Andrie Tarkovky's(spelling mistake in the paper, should be Tarkovsky) film about the medieval icon painter Andrei Rublov. B's version, which emphasizes the movie's depcition of the power of art and mostly ignores its scenes of torture and violence, causes his compatriot to weep.

I burst out loud: I LOVE HIM!

I looked around, people around me did not pay attention.

If you are beside me, you probably will ask, who do you love? I would say the following: The him here stands for Andrie Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublov, Bolano for writing a story like this, the compatriot who wept. It is a complex of some sort.

(Andrie Rublov, is my all time favoriate movie, black and white, 3 hours in length. I just sent you a copy weeks ago. )

Indeed, before I read any of his words, I am already in love. I can not wait to read the Gomez Palacio.

After the paper and bagel and coffee, I was thinking of going to B&N tomorrow to get this book. I felt happy about the prospect.

I was not wearing sun glasses and my eyes were half closed to avoid the brightness. I was looking at the tourists sitting under the sculpture and walking by the circle, I suddenly felt like an exile, a summer tourist in a strange yet beautiful city, like I was in Rome or Paris. Yet, I didn't feel sadness or distance, I felt blessed, happy and the urge to cherish my stay here, my memory and my touch and breath of this city, at this day, before and after.

Yet soon enough, it got too hot and humid, so I went home.

Still, It Is Good To be "Loved"

The new senior account lead, which I barely met but have worked together over conference calls and meetings, a German guy, shouted on the other end of the phone: "I love her work! I love her! I love what she did on this account! " Of course, I was there in the office with my boss, so he may just say it to please me. I am modest when it comes to compliment.

I am modest when it came to the time when you said you love me. I should have believed it.

My boss later kept on repeating this to different people: He said: I love her, I love her, I love her." It reached a point where I had to mildly protest and say: no, he is just saying it.

I know who really loved me, it was not him.

It is never a good sign when your female boss repeat other people's compliment to you, especially other man's, too many times--although my boss and I were close and she was teasing me.

The other day she said again: Your boyfriend wants you very much, after a staffing call.

I smiled a sad smile: Theoratically that has to be true. My boyfriend has to want me. Point is....

Point is you don't want this anymore?

Although I don't "love" this guy back on what ever way or level, it is better to be "loved" and "needed" than hated, especially I was arguing and pushing back on him constantly, with my bluntness of a foreigner, against his bluntness of a foreigner. I was being tough and was surprised that he "loved" this tough Chinese bitch.

You know I have gotten so much better, stronger and tougher at work, and in life, because I do not fear anymore after what we went through.

When does a temptation for a love-making and intimacy stops being a sexual thing and starts becoming love. How do we know? When do we know it is not anything more than?

When we talk about hand-shake-like love making at first, when we desire it so much yet is afraid of it, we are already in love, but we are afraid to face it, we push it down, squeeze it to a thin slice.

Sometime it is easier to say I don't love than to say I do. It is just easier.

And, the only reason that I am still here, facing this torture, being measured up by the work I pretty much hate, being "loved" by people I don't care and barely know, working with your best friend, is to wait for someone and something.

My lease was expiring. The thought of packing my bags and leave this city and country is in my mind many times. Just leave, at least for sometime. Remember I used to tell you, I will leave here if we don't work out. That is a sentiment of I don't want anyone else here besides you. I have a weird way to express my feelings.

Not that I don't love this city, what it has to offer, sometime, you leave only because you love too much and too strong and you can not bear it anymore.

I love this city and this country with its vast space and freedom and safety, something only an immigrant can feel and love.

I love you like how a FOB love this land, you know, is that good or bad? I can not anchor my heart on your coast without burdening you. But I know that is only half the reason.

I am happy and peaceful, because I know what I want and believe in it. I can miss you so terribly yet meanwhile enjoy a book, a show, a funny joke from a friend, a fine dinner, life and enjoy it with the thought that I wish you are there with me, like when I enjoyed Paris alone.

As much as I hate travelling, as much the account is so messed up, I will continue to work on that account, at least partially, only because I don't really want to work, not to say solely, on the acount that your freind is working on. I was pulled in. It is a torture to me. It is busy beyond belief, at least until yesterday, with whining clients.

It made New York Red New York green, the color of my skin now. But I have passed the birth pain. I am picking up breath this weekend. I hold together and strong.

But where can I get hold of you and your heart, again?

Still, it is good to be loved, and to love.

Recent Acquistion by a Bookrish Girl

Between Ice Cream, exercise, new shoes, thinking of you, world cup games, heat wave and storms, I acquired the following books from my most recent trip to B&N at 66 street and Broadway.

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (Paulo Coelho)

Amsterdam (Ian McEwan)

Above two authors I never read before, but they seem to be very productive and easy read. I am curious.

The Thinking Fan's Guide to The World Cup

This is the book of essays about the 32 nations and fun statistics. I read one or two of them either from New Yorker or The New York Times. I love the writing and wit and warmth. This is my first book purchase related with Sports.

Difficult Loves (by Calvino)

Touched with Fire

The book covers a subject that is very important to me, the relations between depression and the artistic temperatment. This book kept me up until 3 am that same night of purchase. Thought provoking.

To offset the bookrish weight, I went out clubbing and bar hopping with friends the night after the purchase. Clubbing is not my thing anymore, never was, full of weird looking instead of good looking people, crowded, the Brit Punk band is not bad at all.

Serena was having male only massage party. Meat packing was less packed with meat at this time and I got drunk for the pain in my heart. Cute and dull bankers are not cure of the pain either, espeically because there is no meaningful conversations that can be carried with them.

Let's just say I prefer to stay at my red studio and enjoy my new book acquisition until dawn and be alone with my thought, and my thought of you.

I maybe just boring and quiet.

Because of all the reading and world up games of this long weekend, I could not sleep last night and could not get up this morning. And I felt horrible. It had something to do with the hot pot I had previous night as well.

So I called in sick and that gaves me a very leisure afternoon and I even watched the France/Portugal game in the neighborhood bar.

Surprise how enjoyable it is when you get a little out of the routine and enjoy the simple life as it is.

I give anything for you and I to have that opportunity, again. Anything.